Photons? For a RADIO telescope?? Yes, quite a while since your astro classes.

Ummm... ALL electromagnetic radiation propagates as photons, not just visible light. What we call light is just a specific range of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. In essence it is no different than radio waves, microwaves, X-rays, gamma rays etc.

A lot of the copying of commercial software is done by people who can't afford it. You'll get students that want to play with 3DSMax or something but can't really swing the $3,500 asking price so they'll download it. That is NOT a lost sale, if it was impossible to copy, they'd simply do without because they haven't the money.

I'm not saying that copying doesn't result in some lost revenue. I'm quite sure that there are sales that would be made if copying was impossible, but aren't because it is. However it is not 100% of copied software, not even close.

Not only is that not a lost sale, that is extremely good marketing that they're getting for free. People who get to know and like software that they pirate will probably buy that software when they can afford to or when they start using that software for business.

I still buy and use development tools that I got to know from pirating them while I was a student. Another example: As a kid I played pirated games and only pirated games. My parents would not buy them and I couldn't afford them. That made me a lifelong gamer and in the years since I started working I've spent thousands of dollars on games, consoles, etc.

The fact one can have patents on aesthetics just shows you how broken the system really is

I'm happy your phone does all that stuff that I've never needed on my iPhone

You've never had the need to browse to a website that requires Flash? You've never wanted to have a bit more storage space? You've never forgotten or lost your USB cable? You've never wanted to copy music from your iPhone?

I own a Samsung Galaxy S and it's NOTHING like an iPhone1. It has expandable storage via microSD2. Its battery is replaceable3. It it can connect to any computer through a standard (and cheap) micro USB cable4. I can copy music to AND FROM my phone with any software that supports USB storage or MTP5. When I switched it on for the first time I didn't need a computer or special software and I wasn't forced to sign up for an iTunes store account6. Within 5 minutes my phone had all my gmail, Facebook and twitter contacts on it, again without needing a computer7. I can copy and paste just about everywhere8. It runs Flash9. Out of the box it supports tethering via USB or Bluetooth and it can even act like a Wi-Fi hotspot10. I can decide what software I run on it rather than having a dictator with arbitrary rules telling me what I'm allowed to do11. I can (and did) download SDK's and development tools for free to write my own software for it12. It can send an receive MMS's (like every phone I've had for the last 6+ years)

... We used to make a lot of money. Now we're not and don't know how to deal with things. It's XXX's fault.

Industries that became technologically obsolete have been making this same argument for years..

Here's the comment I left on the article:

Record companies have exploited a technological and legal window to make insane amounts of money from other people's creativity. Consumers and the majority of artists suffered because of this.

A few big artists (the U2's of the world) got to live like kings, but the majority of artists ended up being slaves to media conglomerates.

The technological window is closing rapidly. Recording, distribution and marketing once required resources that could only be supplied by big companies. In those times record companies contributed something.

Those barriers no longer exist, but the old music industry refuse to accept that they have no more use. They're trying to hold on to their old monopoly by lobbying for ridiculously draconian copyright laws e.g. the RIAA's $75 trillion lawsuit against Limewire.

Like many industries before them (e.g. sawyers after the invention of the saw mill) they'll be kept alive by government action, but ultimately they'll go extinct like the dinosaurs they are.

I've been following the bid process for SKA for quite a few years. As far as I can tell South Africa (together with its other Southern African partners) have a clear advantage over Australia (now together with NZ)

There are a few reasons for this:

1. The passing of the South Africa's Astronomy Geographic Advantage Act in 2007 declares almost the whole of the Northern Cape province (an area about 1.5 times that of the UK) into an astronomy advantage area. Amongst other things it means that light pollution will be limited and that the whole area will eventually be turned into a radio quiet zone.

2. Much of the technology used in South Africa's pilot program (MeerKAT) will be directly useable in SKA. By comparison, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder project has much less tech that will be useable in SKA without major redesign and modification.

3. Price. From the start keeping the price down was a very high priority goal for the SA bid. E.g. they developed a new process to manufacture the dishes that is much cheaper than conventional methods. Now, after the credit crunch where many scientific budgets are getting cut, this strategy is paying off.

Disclaimer 1: I am a South African and therefore far from neutralDisclaimer 2: The last time I read extensively on this is more than six months ago, so if there were significant developments recently then I might not be aware of them

Somewhere the public perception of copyright (and other IP rights) went from "a time limited incentive to encourage the creation of novel content" to "content creators have the right to get paid in perpetuity".

Because of the technological and legal environment of the 20th century it was possible for content creators and distributors to make insane amounts of money for a very limited amount of work.

That created the idea that they have some god-given right to get paid for absolutely everything that ever gets done with their content or anything that is derived from it. That has not been the case for most of history and it will almost certainly not be the case in the future... and no that will not mean the end of music and art.

When looking at where else all those unlicensed users would go if they didn't become legal Windows users, Apple doesn't really come into it much.

Well put. This actually happened to me recently.

My home PC had a volume licensed version of XP on it that I got from the company I worked for a few years back. Suddenly, about a month ago, my Windows Genuine Advantage started failing and my PC started nagging me about it the whole time.

I have used Linux a lot in the past but I've never had it installed as the main OS on my primary PC.

This incident was the last bit of motivation that I needed to switch to Linux. I have now been running Kubuntu 8.10 for two weeks and I love it. I can't think of any reason to switch back.

OK, let's raise a few points (full of simplifications, but I hope you get the gist of it):

Art is as old as humanity itself and the creation of art has been something that most people would engage in. Much later the idea of a professional artist came about. Over time the trend has been more and more to have to classes of people - the artists who produce art and the common folk who consume it.

Rich patrons paid for the creation of art by professional artists, but they were not the only consumers. Common folk could go to theatres or live music performances.

Art was democratised by technology, not by copyright laws. Copyright was created to place limits on what could be done to make sure that artists will benefit (for a limited period) from the work they created before it became part of the public domain.

For the largest part of the 20th century the technology was as such a stage that you needed large amount of resources to mass produce copies of art. This gave large corporations the same kind of monopoly on the creation of art that rich patrons had in an earlier era. They profited hugely from the state of technology and from copyright laws that were originally intended to foster innovation, protect individual artists and benefit society as a whole.

There are many problems with the way big corporations abuse copyright, but one of the worst is the way that they keep on pushing for copyright extension. They want to take from society and give nothing back. Take Disney for example. If you go through their products you will find hundreds examples of them profiting from the public domain (Snow White, Cinderella, the Three Little Pigs, Treasure Island.. you can fill pages with this). Yet they will do everything in their power to make copyrights perpetual. Mickey Mouse is now more than a hundred years old and yet they still retain exclusive rights. It does not benefit the original artists and it stifles innovation - the exact opposite of what copyright law was intended to do. If you have a child in kindergarten, they can't put up a play with Disney characters in them without infringing on their copyright.

In the mean time technology has progressed to a point where the stranglehold that large media conglomerates have on art are no longer the natural state of affairs, but they will fight tooth and claw to keep their racket going.

Technology has moved on, but our laws are still largely from the 18th century except that they have over time been skewed in favour of corporation and against the rights of artists and society as a whole.

Yes! It's only a matter of time until Slashdot's heroes, the Pirate Bay operators, get away with this. It's our right as human beings to rip off artists and not pay them, and it's totally awesome for Pirate Bay to run a torrent tracker that connects users so that they can distribute file chunks to each other.

FUCK artists, and FUCK their rights. They are our slaves. We don't owe them a dime for their work. Long live, Pirate Bay, and enjoy the victory, guys!

Yes of course - art only came into existence when copyright was invented in the 1700's and it will instantly disappear once copyright is gone. People like you act as if copyright is some divine right that was handed down from the hand of God himself.

Your view of the situation is extremely simplistic. The main problem is that current copyright laws mostly protect the profits of big corporations, they don't benefit artists and they discourage rather than encourage innovation.

The current laws are outdated and they don't work, but there are many companies willing to spend millions to maintain the status quo. Copyright laws must be completely rewritten so that they accomplish what they were intended to do in the first place: help society as a whole by encouraging innovation by ensuring that artists get their due.